The news was announced via a blog post, which also confirmed that WePay would be one of the first developers to take advantage of the new certification. WePay helps small businesses and online marketplaces facilitate payments between their users.

The firm’s director of DevOps David Nye explained the benefits of partnering with Google’s cloud services.

The award of the PCI standard does not mean that anyone can develop payment applications for Google Cloud, but rather that PCI-certified developers can create software for the platform without compromising their own certification.

Smaller developers in particular are likely to benefit from the news, as they will be able to use Google’s cloud platform to upscale their services without having to construct a data centre of their own.

Google will be hoping that its PCI accreditation will encourage more software engineers to use their platform over its competitors, and the firm is also offering assistance to potential developers who have not yet achieved the PCI standard.